Thursday, 2 June 2016

Gerard Lyons: "The European Union is like the Titanic. Imagine being in Southampton harbour the day the Titanic set sail. Its size gave the impression of invincibility: safe and secure. It wasn’t. Despite receiving warnings of impending danger it didn’t change course, hit trouble and sank.Because it is huge, some in the UK feel we would be safer and economically stronger in the EU. This is wrong. We now have the opportunity to jump ship to safety. An opportunity we are never likely to have again. Not a leap into the dark, but for those able to look ahead, a move to safety." (Image by Wikipedia)

The political experts have misjudged every aspect of the referendum fight. Their clichéd thinking led them to believe that the Brexit campaign would be backward-looking and reactionary, whereas the Remain effort would be optimistic and positive. But the reverse is true. The Leavers have been upbeat, emphasising the need for Britain to embrace freedom and take her place on the global stage by throwing off the shackles of EU bureaucracy. In contrast, the Remain campaign has been relentlessly gloomy, insular and defeatist. Its profoundly unpatriotic central theme is that Britain is too enfeebled to survive on its own without EU rule or a flood of EU migrants. The Remain campaigners can never be positive about the EU because the organisation is a basket case, as dysfunctional as it is undemocratic. Confronted by the evidence of the EU’s comprehensive failure, the Remainers bleat about the need for reform. But, as David Cameron’s humiliating recent deal proved, the EU is not remotely interested in reform, only in the creation of the federal superstate at the expense of traditional nationhood. Despite all the scaremongering propaganda, it is clear that truth is beginning to penetrate the electorate. There is now real hope that we could grab the chance to govern ourselves again.

Wednesday, 1 June 2016

The same people, media and organisations that once urged the UK to join the Eurozone are now backing the Remain side:

Of course the referendum on Britain’s EU membership is about much more than economics. It is a vote over how Britain wishes to be governed – by either an elected parliament in Britain or an unelected Commission in Brussels. However, with such economic wisdom supposedly on the side of the Remain camp, it is worth recalling the attitude that Euro-enthusiasts in Britain once had for the euro. The continent’s single currency, needless to say, has been an economic disaster. Yet had the pro-EU crowd had their way, Britain too would have been part of this union of monetary mess.Among many, it was self-evident that Britain should join the euro. Some of the most influential politicians in the 1990s and 2000s were fervently pro single currency. From Danny Alexander and Paddy Ashdown, to Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, Ken Clarke, alongside Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne, and Chris Patten. At the same time, supposed key dispensers of financial and business wisdom in the country such as the Financial Times and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) were also making the case for the euro.

Rishi Sunak, Conservative MP for Richmond, destroys the economic argument for Remain: In July 2011, to the clink of Belgian beer glasses, the European Commission toasted a momentous day. 54 years after its founding members gave up the power to negotiate their own trade deals, the EU’s Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with South Korea had come into force; its first ever trade deal with a major developed economy.The fact that South Korea’s economy is only half the size of Britain’s, that it had taken the EU five years longer to sign the deal than Switzerland, and that – after half a century – the EU still does not have a free trade deal in place with a single top 10 economy was, no doubt, sensibly ignored.As pundits begin to talk sagely about the Remain campaign having "won the economic argument", it’s worth taking a moment to remember just how dismal the EU’s record of international trade has been.I’m the son of Indian immigrants and spent my business career working abroad, investing in companies from Silicon Valley to Bangalore. It’s an experience that for me crystallised what EU’s own figures predict: a decade from now, 90 per cent of global demand will be generated from outside Europe.The scales of the global economy are tipping eastward and, as they do so, the EU’s trade failings are taking an increasingly heavy toll on the UK. The reason for that is this is that Europe’s major economies are primarily focused on the European market. Britain, meanwhile – the only major EU economy that exports more outside the EU than within it – is traditionally far more outward looking, with EU exports accounting for just 13 per cent of our GDP and falling.The result is that our country’s trade policy is now run by an organisation with fundamentally different trade priorities to our own. For Britain that means too few trade deals, too slowly, with mismatched partners.Read the entire Telegraph article here

Tuesday, 31 May 2016

Two Guardian/ICM polls suggest the British public are in favour of leaving the EU.Voters have split 52-48 in favour of Brexit whether surveyed online or by phone.“Our poll rather unhinges a few accepted orthodoxies,” said ICM’s director, Martin Boon. “It is only one poll, but in a rather unexpected reverse of polling assumptions so far, both our phone poll and our online poll are consistent on both vote intentions and on the EU referendum.”It comes as an ORB poll for the Telegraph showed rise in support for Brexit with 46 per cent backing Leave and 51 per cent for Remain.